


A Long Night

by VelkynKarma



Series: Parallel by Proxy [3]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, Illness, Kuron (Voltron)-centric, Kuron is Shiro (Voltron)'s Clone, Major Illness, Nightmares, PTSD, Shiro (Voltron)-centric, clone degeneration, heed warnings in notes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-18
Updated: 2018-03-18
Packaged: 2019-04-04 05:49:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14013537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VelkynKarma/pseuds/VelkynKarma
Summary: A missing scene from "Failsafe." Shiro takes care of a very ill Ryou while the others are away, but it's not so easy to do when he just wants a few hours of rest for himself.





	A Long Night

**Author's Note:**

> This isn't really new, just a cross-post from Tumblr, where I posted this side-scene shortly after finishing Failsafe. I decided I wanted it all together in one place, so I'm posting it here as its own one-shot.
> 
> It originally would have taken place during chapter 2, close to the end of it, but it just didn’t really fit into the flow & constraints of the chapter. The contents got reduced to two summary lines in the fic itself, but I wrote the scene for my own peace of mind afterwards.
> 
>  **Same warnings apply as in Failsafe:** contains a very ill Ryou displaying symptoms commonly associated with dementia and some nasty degenerative diseases, so **read only if you’re comfortable with that.**

The mattress shifts slightly from movement, and Shiro raises into awareness immediately with a tired groan. Ryou is awake again.  
  
He cracks a bleary eye open at the glowing clock Hunk had fixed him a while back. It’s somewhere in the vicinity of three-thirty AM Castle Time—too early for anyone to be awake without good reason. The room is mostly dark, lit softly with the light blue of Altean evening lights, enough to let someone see in an emergency without disturbing their sleep cycle.  
  
The mattress shifts again behind Shiro, and he grumbles into his pillow. Ryou is _definitely_ awake—he can hear his clone’s incoherent mumbling to himself as he starts to rise. The question is less ‘is he up’ and rather ‘ _why_ is he up.’ Shiro could spend all night speculating if he really wanted to, but he’s _tired,_ damn it—he’d actually been sleeping soundly for a change—so instead he just asks.  
  
“Where are you going, Ryou?”  
  
Ryou doesn’t answer. Instead he fumbles awkwardly on the inside of the bunk, disoriented from waking, and uncoordinated due to his missing arm and too-thin frame. He tries to climb out of bed, but the task is made difficult for him due to Shiro sleeping across the outside of the bunk, and he seems more perplexed than anything else on how to get out.  
  
That had been the point, of course. Shiro was alone on Ryou supervision—the rest of the team had been needed for splitting up on two different missions, and were due to be gone for a full quintent or more. Coran was still on the Castle of Lions, but Ryou didn’t take well to strangers in his current condition. They made him anxious and distressed more often than not, or flustered when he knows he’s supposed to remember these people but doesn’t. It means Shiro’s without any kind of relief when he needs a break for even a few hours’ sleep, not unless it’s an absolute emergency.  
  
It’s not the first time he’s ended up sleeping in Ryou’s room, on hand in case his clone has some kind of episode or needs assistance with something. It’s not even the first time he’s ended up sharing the bunk. He’d tried using a pallet on the ground at first, but when Ryou tried to wander in the middle of the night he tended to trip over it—or Shiro—and he bruised easily these days. Sleeping on the outside edge of the bunk solved most of those problems. Shiro could tell the moment Ryou woke, and Ryou usually wasn’t coordinated enough to crawl over him, which meant he didn’t wander off and hurt himself by accident.   
  
That still doesn’t mean he doesn’t _try._ Shiro feels the corner of one blanket flop over his shoulder as Ryou shoves it aside and weakly tries to lever himself out of bed. He’s not particularly successful, with only one arm and Shiro in the way, but Shiro gives him points for effort.  
  
He sighs. “Shiro,” he tries instead, muttering his own name tiredly, “Where are you going?”  
  
Ryou pauses this time, and seems to realize that the person-sized lump obstructing his escape is, in fact, person-sized due to being an actual person. “Kerberos briefing,” he mutters after a moment with a yawn. He doesn’t sound happy to be up; he sounds like somebody getting up at the crack of dawn to go to class or a job out of sheer necessity.  
  
He also doesn’t sound particularly confused at finding another person who he may or may not recognize as identical to himself sharing a bunk in an unknown room, which tells Shiro all he needs to know about Ryou’s understanding of where he is. It’s simple: he doesn’t have one.   
  
Shiro groans into his pillow. It’s going to be one of _those_ nights, he can already tell.   
  
“The meeting got moved,” he says, when Ryou makes a fumbled attempt to climb over his torso for the floor beyond. He cracks an eye open to keep watch, just in case. And also to make sure Ryou doesn’t get too close to his prosthetic. If he falls on it trying to crawl over Shiro, he’ll bruise pretty badly, even when Shiro’s taken to wearing full long sleeves when he sleeps to put at least some thin material between the metal and Ryou.   
  
A Ryou thinking properly as Shiro might have first asked ‘how would you know?’ (Actually, a Ryou thinking properly as Shiro might have first opened with ‘who the hell are you and why are you in my room,’ but Shiro will give him a little leeway. He’s sick, after all). There’s only a small number of people who’d been privy to the Kerberos mission briefings, and since Ryou thought he was Shiro, he’s already taking up Shiro’s space. Assuming he hasn’t recognized Shiro, anyway. A lot of the time Ryou seems to think they’re the same person simultaneously, and Shiro can’t even begin to wrap his head around how that works.   
  
Instead, frowning slightly in confusion, the actual question Ryou asks is, “Why?”  
  
Shiro grabs the first excuse his half-asleep mind can manage. “Iverson’s car broke down. Called and said he’ll be a few hours late.”  
  
Ryou’s frown grows deeper. “He did?”  
  
“Yes,” Shiro says. “So you should go back to sleep. Get a few more hours of rest.”  
  
Ryou doesn’t seem convinced. “Simulator…might be free—“  
  
“No,” Shiro vetoes. “Sleep. Sleep is good for you. Need to be rested for Kerberos.” _Not that you actually want to go, unless you fancy a year-long abduction,_ he thinks to himself darkly.   
  
No need to voice that, of course. Ryou’s confused enough as it is.  
  
Ryou doesn’t settle down. Shiro suspects he wants to object, still, and curses his own over-enthusiasm back on Earth. But then Ryou yawns again, and Shiro seizes the chance. “See,” he says, gentle and soothing, “You’re tired. It’s real early. Just close your eyes for another twenty minutes. The simulator will still be there after.”  
  
Ryou mutters a little under his breath, weak and slurring. After a moment he mumbles, “Really moved?”  
  
“Promise,” Shiro assures.   
  
“Okay.” Ryou finally submits to his own fatigue, and slowly, painfully, settles back down to the mattress behind Shiro. It takes him a while to find a comfortable position, and he twists and tosses and turns restlessly. Most of his body is sore or in pain these days, and he sometimes has trouble breathing in certain positions.   
  
But after fifteen minutes or so, he finally manages to settle into something relatively comfortable, and Shiro finally feels him go still. As much as Shiro wants to drop back into his own sleep, he waits, forcing himself to stay conscious until Ryou’s harsh, rattling breaths settle into a more steady rhythm of sleep.  
  
“Stay out cold, this time,” Shiro mutters to his clone, before finally drifting back off himself.  
  
He wakes to the sensation of the mattress moving again, and groans in frustration as he cracks an eye open once more to check the time. Four forty-five AM Castle Time. It’s been less than an hour for Shiro since he last dropped off. What does Ryou have against him _sleeping?_   
  
But when he hears Ryou’s voice this time, it’s not sleepy murmuring. It’s whimpering, plaintive and small, and that has Shiro more instantly awake in ticks than he had been for the entire last conversation.   
  
He rolls over and sits up immediately, palming the switch nearby with his Galra hand to raise the dim lights to active day brightness. Ryou is curled on his side, with his blankets tangled around him, skeletal left hand clutching at the bandaged remains of his right arm. His eyes are squeezed tightly shut, and his teeth are grit in a grimace of pain, through which harsh pants and strained whimpers just barely escape.   
  
“Hey,” Shiro calls. “Hey, wake up. It’s a nightmare, Ryou. Up, wake up—that’s it…”  
  
He’s cautious about touching Ryou in this state—it scares the hell out of Shiro, when one of the others tries to wake him from a nightmare, well meaning or no. But calling Ryou seems to help, and after a moment his eyes flutter open. His gaze is disoriented and unfocused—Ryou’s so ill by now he’s almost blind, and can only make out blurry shapes at best in the strongest of lighting. His breaths still come in harsh pants as he tries to lever himself up again, and he’s shaking so badly Shiro is half afraid he’ll shatter.  
  
“Easy, take it easy,” he says, gently as possible. He wraps his left arm carefully around Ryou’s shoulders to support him. “Easy, shh—it’s over, I promise—“  
  
“They…they won’t stop hurting me,” Ryou gasps, wild-eyed and frightened. “They won’t _stop_ , they…I don’t _understand.”_ His shaking gets so bad he can’t hold himself up anymore, and Shiro has to support him before he collapses. His rattling pants sound awful and painful, and a slow whine works its way out of his throat. His remaining skeletal hand fastens into Shiro’s shirt with an edge of desperation. “I don’t…they’re _monsters,_ they won’t stop, it _hurts_ , it always _hurts_ , why are they….what…what did I _do_ —“  
  
“Nothing,” Shiro insists sharply. He’s not sure which Galra memory Ryou’s dug up accidentally, if it’s one he already has or one Ryou stumbled across on his own; Ryou’s terrified description is, depressing and frighting though it is, too vague an account to make out details. But he does know that much. He didn’t deserve it, and Ryou didn’t deserve to get his memories by proxy.  
  
“I don’t understand,” Ryou gasps, weaker now. “Why won’t they stop hurting me?”  
  
Shiro doesn’t really have an answer for that. He’d never understood it himself. Instead, he leans back against the interior of the bunk, and adjusts Ryou so his clone is resting more comfortably against his chest. Ryou winces a little at the movement—his muscles and joints are so sensitive these days—but he settles slightly once he can hear the calm, repetitive thud of Shiro’s heartbeat. That had been what Shiro had been banking on; sometimes it helps where nothing else does.  
  
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Shiro promises. “It’s not your fault. I promise that’s over now. They’re not here. They can’t hurt you now.” _Never again, if I have my way._   
  
“It _hurt,”_ Ryou whispers.  
  
“Shh,” Shiro soothes. “I know it did. It’s over. It won’t happen again.”   
  
Ryou doesn’t speak again, but he doesn’t stop shaking for a long time. Shiro knows how frightening those dreams can be, but Ryou doesn’t even have any context for them anymore. Shiro knows his tormentors are the Galra, and knows what they stand for. He’s fought them in person and knows they’re not infallible. Ryou doesn’t, not anymore. To Ryou, they’re demons in his head, immortal tormentors that can’t be fought or escaped. He doesn’t know what they want with him or what they’re doing to him. He can barely distinguish the dreams from reality, and half the time not even that. All he knows is he suffers.   
  
Shiro can’t help but hold him just a little tighter at the thought. Like he can somehow safeguard Ryou from every awful thing buried in his head, if he just holds him close enough.  
  
It takes Ryou more than half an hour to fall back asleep again. Shiro counts every single Earth-based minute on Hunk’s clock. He does what he can to help, murmuring soothingly, promising there’s no danger, assuring that there won’t be any more tormentors. And at last, Ryou’s pain-filled whimpering settles into the wheezing, even breaths of an exhausted sleep, and his claw-like grip on Shiro’s shirt finally releases as his skeletal hand drops weakly into his lap.  
  
Shiro’s in no rush to move him, now. He’s wide awake, and no longer has any real desire to try and scrounge another hour or two of rest. He waits another fifteen minutes, counting each one on the clock, until he’s sure Ryou is definitely out cold again, coaxed to sleep by the rhythm of Shiro’s heartbeat.  
  
Then he finally moves him, slowly and cautiously. It’s less because he’s afraid of waking Ryou, who isn’t nearly as much of a light sleeper as he used to be with his illness. Shiro’s more concerned about his sore muscles and painful joints, and the way he struggles for breath if he’s settled down the wrong way. Shiro doesn’t want to cause Ryou more unnecessary pain than is needed. But he’s had some practice now, and he eventually gets Ryou settled on his side again, tucking the blankets carefully around him once more.  
  
Shiro dims the lights in the room again, but doesn’t settle in for sleep quite yet, instead sitting on the edge of the bunk. Ryou’s getting worse. Every day, he’s getting worse, in a hundred different ways that none of them could ever predict. Every day, he’s getting worse, and they’re still no closer to understanding why.  
  
“Shit.” Shiro rubs his face tiredly. He feels exhausted all over again, but in his head more than his body. This is too much. This is awful to watch. This was a whole new kind of pain Shiro had never experienced, and he wishes he never had.   
  
_It will be fine,_ he tells himself. _The others are searching right now. They might have a lead for this. There’ll be answers. Things will be fine. You just have to help him hold on until then. Just take it one day at a time._   
  
It’s the best he can do. With a sigh, he finally lays down on the edge of the bunk again, once more playing border-guard in case Ryou decides enough hours have passed for that Kerberos briefing, or gets confused over a new task he thinks he’s supposed to be taking care of. He lays there for a while, listening to the steady, harsh breaths of Ryou in his slumber, counting quietly to make sure the next one still comes.  
  
He never does sleep again, that night.  
  


**Author's Note:**

> At least we know how it turns out from Failsafe, right?


End file.
